Jefferson freed only his Hemings kin out of over six hundred slaves

Evidence

Aside from his Hemings children (and Sally Hemings), Jefferson did not free any of the other enslaved people at Monticello. One historian estimated that Jefferson had owned more than six hundred slaves over the course of his lifetime. In 1826, he held around two hundred people as property and he was about 100,000 in debt (about 2 million in 2014), an amount so staggering that he knew that once he died, everything—and everyone—would be sold. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 423

Categorization

• SHARE: The specific metric — six hundred held, only Hemings kin freed, $100k debt — is exactly the kind of detail a Jefferson scholar or history-obsessed friend would savor.